Breath heats the back of my neck, seeping through all the layers of clothes.
I spin around, hating that I’ve been caught off guard and unarmed.
Nostrils fill my vision. They flare, a gesture of curiosity, more reassuring than the ivory points curved from the dragon’s jaw.
I raise my eyes slowly, working up my courage. The whole time, a hand span away, the creature is soundless.
Its snout and face are a rising series of points and bony crests, the face of a weapon. Gold brow ridges slash above its bronze eyes, lending a permanent look of malicious consideration.
It clouds me in another waft of steam, its breath the incense odor I first smelled on entering. I turn my face from the heat of it and realize for the first time how big the creature is. Its head fills most of the space between two columns, body and tail winding and weaving between the others, beast and chamber braided together.
It slips left, circling me, claws ticking the marble. I don’t hesitate to call it beautiful, auburn scales bright and tipped in gold. It flows between the columns and beneath the arches like water, with terrible grace. After a second pass, it ripples away, coiling at the dais.
My mind shakes off fear and awe, and the pieces fit.
The guard warned me about using the name, but I’ll take my chances. “Tindra...”
She circles the dais on a last turn, then flows into the rear passage, and disappears.
Should I wait? Follow? Prepare to be roasted? I watch the opening and wait.
“What are you staring at?”
Breath paints my ear just like the dragons, but the voice is very much a woman’s, low, sensual, regal. She takes her lips from my ear and I turn around, as we size each other up.
Tindra is big. Not with the brawn like Callista. Tindra’s red-bronze arms and legs are lean-muscled, but thick. And long; if the trials hadn’t changed me physically, she’d dwarf me. As it is we stand just eye to eye.
Black waves riot from her head, over low gold combs of bone above her temples, and spill almost to her hips. She’s dressed as a dragon, a warrior, and a woman who fears little. Boots reach her knees, leathers hug long hips, and a bandeau covers breasts in scale with the rest of her, held by a gold clasp in the center and fine gold chains at her slender shoulders. I can’t help but look. I’ve never seen a dragon, or a dragon in mortal form. And her mortal form is made to make a man weep.
She leans on one hip, her posture considering. There’s amusement hidden in her regal face, her pointed chin, and her full lips are playful, almost girlish. She’s come to play, a dangerous thing for a mortal and a dragon.
“What are you?” It’s rhetorical, whispered as she circles me one last time. “Where have you come from?”
This is not rhetorical. And no mortal trusts a dragon, not even a dragon that’s an Artifact. Distrust has been burned into us since the beginning of time.
“I was sent by Crispinus to aid the Raudr.”
Tindra inhales me. “The odor of the womb lingers on you... MacVortigan.”
My bluff falls apart without my speaking a word; a wide-eyed stare gives me away. How does she know? “My mother’s clan, aye.”
“Clan.” Tindra smirks around a little tsk and slips into her throne. “I’m told they hold the southlands of your world like an iron fist.” Her amused expression fades like dusk into night, and she sits straight-backed in all her state. “Or, they used to. When they did, they held it so thanks to your ancient kin...and the sorcerer. Do you call him Myrddin Emrys? Or is he Merlin in your westman’s tongue?”
My mind rakes for my mother’s faded stories. They were told so long ago, and my mind, thick with sleep or dimmed by the distraction of little wooden soldiers, held on to so little of her tales in the first place.
“You’re fitting the pieces together.” Tindra nods, nails clicking impatiently at the lacquer of her throne. “The fables of mortals are riddled with confusion, and utterly lacking. In your tales destiny falls upon a hapless peasant boy of no particular note or merit. It sounds unbelievable because it is. Fate and Glory pay no calls to the inherently obscure. But if like dragons, men had all the time in the world they would begin their stories at the beginning. A thousand years before, when a king defied his wisemen’s counsel and spared the life of a boy sired not of man.”
King? “MacVortigan.” The name feels cool and present on my lips, like a spell.
Tindra nods. “You must know where the pair met, so you already have a guess where your journey will end.”
A place-name whispers through my thoughts like a breeze, the words spoken in my mother’s voice. “Dinas Ffaraon, the hill fort, at a pool upon the summit.”
“Myrddin didn’t show your sire their present when he revealed the red dragon and the white hidden in that pool. It was a vision, meant as a warning and a message to the one of Vortigan’s blood to fulfill their destiny.”
The one? Me. A thousand years ago my fate was etched out. All of it or only part? “A red dragon and a white?” I clarify. The stories of my childhood never mentioned a black dragon.
“The white flight have grown black, feasting a thousand years at Mordenn’s table.” Her face twists. “The greatest of all creatures, willingly subjugated by a lesser being. They will never regain their pure and noble color. All that remains for the Svartr is destruction.”
“If MacVortigan’s encounter was a vision of what would be...of what I’m meant to do, help me understand what’s at stake now. Something holds defeat of the Svartr in uncertainty.”
Tindra hesitates. More than that; she doesn’t even seem to weigh my question. She’s not giving more without something in collateral. Humans have left their own small mark on the trust of dragons.
I might just have something to offer. “Silas Blaloch.”
The beautiful red-bronze cast of her skin fades. Tindra’s fingers clench. “What do you know of him?”
“That he can’t fly.” I take the creased letter from my clothes. “That he lost a number of papers when he was thrown from the causeway; this one he wanted to be found.”
Tindra leaves her dais for the first time, claiming Sirus' letter. She flips it, glances at me, and flips it again, brows knit. “Where is the rest?”
“This is the only page I found from his missive. Wadded and thrown about the same time he was.”
“Fool!” she spits, crumpling the fractured page.
“Do you know who wrote it?”
“There are some on both sides who might have.” And she’s working lightning speed through the list.
She still knows more than she’s telling; I can feel it. I want to help her, but if she won’t let me... “Sounds like you have your matter and you have your suspects. I’ll leave you to sort it all out.” I bow and turn on my heel.
“Stop!”
I don’t. I’ve come this far, proven myself. If Tindra is too proud or stubborn to accept it…
Her voice is quiet, command tempered. “Wait. Please.”
I take my hand from the door and turn back.
“Sirus Blaloch is, was a clockmaker.”
“And?”
“And forbidden from ever again entering Akershus or crossing the Bifrost.”
“Two questions for every answer.”
She waves me back toward the dais. “Some of this will be easier if I show you.” Tindra ascends the dais as I follow. Her thick, delicious ass sways in tight leathers as she ascends, and it’s impossible to pull my eyes away until she grips one gold arm of her throne and pulls. Gears click with the heavy, efficient tap of the best dwarven machines. The massive chair folds forward as a slab of the marble ahead sinks in.
When she’s done her throne lays flush with the floor, the first gilded step of a staircase plunging into shadow.
The darkness is a small, temporary pool at the landing, sheltered by an arch that filters the blazing torchlight of a chamber so symmetrical, a perfect half-circle, that it dizzies me. An oculus in the dome reveals night sky s
hrouded in blue moonlight. The moon is all that keeps the oculus from being obscured by the cobalt dome, painted with gold stars. White marble walls and columns hold up the artificial cosmos and ring the chamber’s base. All this pale stone is a perfect setting for a massive gold machine at its center.
Tindra leads me closer to it, but not too close. I can smell a faint hint of perspiration, feel the tension of risk and fear stringing her long limbs. This is one of the private rooms the footman alluded to; one that is locked and locked to all.
“After the uprising of the dragon flights and rebellion by mortals and amaranthine, Odr realized the Bifrost wasn’t enough.”
She waves and I follow her to an archway across the chamber and onto a stone balcony rimed with frost. The land surrounding Akershus looks completely different. The geography is lush but rugged, worn and strengthened by the sea’s ravages, gray crests that consume a boulder lined coast. There is no overlook, no spectators, no glow of a nearby town or lighted path up the mountain.
“Gods among the nine realms, and countless others, agreed it wasn’t enough for the Bifrost, the bridge to Asgard, as well as entrances to other places of power to exist behind barriers. Mortals are determined and cunning, and yet the simplest of all creatures. So if they could slip inside…” She tosses me a wry look.
“All of it was made to exist in another time.” This explains so much; the disparate realms connected to Cocidius’ temple, and the temple itself. How it changes, how the world appears from within and without. The astratempus. How it was winter when I entered the temple, but summer before I entered this trial.
She leads us in again, back to the pedestal, gesturing over a contraption that could fill a small chamber. “So the astrachronograph was made.”
“How?” I barely manage the word. Contraption wasn’t the right term, I realize. It’s a work of beauty, mechanical genius crafted into art.
Tindra glances through the oculus, aided by a dragon’s innate understanding of time. “We’re nearly on the hour; watch.”
The entire machine stands inside a domed, three-sided cage large enough to house a great beast, a bear or a lion. Every bit of the astrachronograph is gold. This would be impressive if it were made from nothing but miters and bevels, but the metal is used like paint, marble, paper. It has texture and thickness, shape that defies its origin.
In the center stands a wide-canopied tree, rough-barked, its vellum-thin leaves fluttering in the chamber’s current. A clock chimes somewhere out in the palace. A hum begins within the astrachronograph, the delicate vibration of dragonfly wings. A crystal movement sings a primitive note.
Two dragons atop the tree circle one another, maw-to-tail. Their scales are as fine as any real serpents, paper-thin and etched in leather grain. Teeth no bigger than needle points look capable of genuine harm.
A squirrel slides up the left trunk.
They fighters freeze. The first dragon rotates, its tail articulating with more dexterity than it should possess. It whips the second dragon, knocking it from the tree.
Air around us thickens. The creature slides along a hidden groove in the trunk, landing among the roots. The trunk tick-tick-ticks a half-turn. Its target is a wire-ribbed orb hung from the branches, a world. Inside it, nine little bells chime away.
The world feels like paper on the verge of ripping. A prickle dances over my flesh. It occurs to me the astrachronograph may do something I’m not prepared for. Something I can’t endure.
On the third bell, a wren perched upon the lowest branch springs to life. It’s thumb-sized downy head raises and it calls a tinny warble before alighting on a near-invisible gold thread. The wren lands at the winning dragon’s feet and warbles again. The dragon rears up, razor jaws working around a silent roar.
Time becomes a palpable thing; it flows over me like a damp wind or frigid water. A cluster of roses at the tree’s base bloom, gold velvet petals separating. A hare springs forth on spry mechanical haunches, racing along the ground. It clicks to a halt at the orb, which raises on its cord just as the second dragon slides beneath with hungry jaws. Too late for its prey, the dragon gives its own silent roar and, claimed by a gold hook, disappears beneath the forest floor.
The pull against my body builds to a climax. Just when the individual bits of my being feel stretched, my body anchored in time’s quicksand, the whole world pulls. It slips away, shifts, moves a step beyond the moment we’re in. I want to look to Tindra, to ask her if we should run, but I can’t move, can’t tear my eyes from the astrachronograph.
The ninth bell chimes as the orb disappears inside the tree’s thick canopy. Three more chimes ring out, as the rabbit burrows, the wren takes her branch, and the second dragon appears atop the canopy with the help of another hidden lift inside the trunk. The orb lowers soundlessly, and the astrachronograph is still. But time and the world around us have changed.
Ratatoskr, the dragons. A hare. I gasp, and turn to Tindra, who stands unfazed at my side.
“There was another piece once that appeared before the dragon falls. A device to keep the seconds, but it was stolen.”
Something about her words tug at me, but then glide past, unheeded. “Kordram Sirus Blaloch was more than a clockmaker...”
“He was much more than a clockmaker. What he was...perhaps Odr knows, but I don’t. I’ve never spoken to one who does. Once when Njord passed along my shore, he surmised that Sirus was a product of a coupling between a being of the Origin, and an arcane shade. Beings that founded the world and filled the realms with magical energy. Neither the gods of origin or the shades possessed much corporeal form. This would make sense; Sirus was magically, mechanically powerful, and physically frail.”
“So he could alter time itself but couldn’t survive a plunge over a bridge?”
The astrachronograph is Tindra’s sole focus for a long moment. “He risked his life to come here. Blaloch has protection; he has means. That he came alone, urgently, and with so much desperate risk…” Tindra works a full lower lip beneath the pearl point of a tooth. “I just can’t say if he came to do good or ill.”
“He was the only one who really knew how this thing works, I take it.”
“Mmm. But unfortunately, not the only one who knew its flaw. Our enemies puzzled that out, but only Blaloch knew the exact nature.”
“Which is why he was forbidden from returning.”
“The dwarves and arkan who crafted the mechanisms were kept secret from each other and executed when the clock was complete. Blaloch knew the consequences for returning here, so whatever he came for was worth risking his life. But Blaloch isn’t of our kind or our realms. He was chosen because he had no loyalty to the flights or the gods.”
“A boon at the time. But he could have found loyalty elsewhere, over time.”
Tindra’s eyes narrow. “Or found his own motives. I want to believe he came to help, and that help is in the page he saved, but I can’t be certain anymore – of anything.”
“What is the flaw?”
She wavers, eyes dimming.
“I’m here for you, in the most literal sense. I am practically bound to help you; without you my quest fails. The story of MacVortigan’s vision, it means our destinies are twined. If that’s not enough for you to trust me a little…”
She nods, resigned if not resolved. “Have you ever played a rune puzzle?”
“No, not really, but I know how they work; you slide the pieces to incorrect spots until you free up the correct ones.” I don’t admit that games like rune puzzles took more patience and maybe intelligence than I possessed when I was young.
“The realms exist in a place; there’s no changing where they rest in the heavens. But those locations can be moved around each other...in a certain order. The order cannot be broken; it would tear the realms, the world tree, and the threads to other worlds, apart.”
“And I take it some realms pass that a few inhabitants would prefer didn’t.”
“If they were aware of it
, you’d be right. There’s a moment in the clock’s movement when Hel and Heimdallr align. There’s no measure of time small enough to explain how brief it is; Blaloch was able to mitigate that at least.”
“But not able to prevent it.”
“No. And all that keeps it from being exploited, all that keeps the legions of Hel, and the black dragonflight from spewing forth, is that impossible speed. But it’s also the only moment where what you just saw can come to pass.” She means the clock; the hare, the black dragon falling from the tree.
An idea begins to coalesce, half formed.
Gods, demi-gods, legendary beasts – they’re powerful, but speed is reserved for a small few. This is why Kumiko’s race is so valued by the Æsir and Vanir. But she’s not the only one of her kind. “Not forever. Not even for much longer if what’s in that letter is true. Your court is bloated with Svartr and their spies.”
“Don’t think I don’t know. All my energy and resources go to it while my list of allies and my trust dwindles.” Tindra’s voice dips to a portentous tone. “My grip is slipping.”
It must cost her so much to admit it. I throw her a wink. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Gods, travelers from the past and future…” Her full lips turn in a slight smile. “You have Destiny and Fate on your side, but still...If a mortal succeeds where the other races failed, there will be a host of very humble beings throughout the realms.”
“They should start preparing now.”
Tindra starts back across the chamber. “I don’t know if you’re changing my opinion on mortals or reinforcing it.”
“I have some surprises left; don’t decide just yet.”
–The Final Hour–
Kumiko finds me in the eternal pull of bodies moving up and down the grand staircase. Her wig, mask, and gown are all in place, but my trained eye catches the wisps of hair loosed at her temple and the creases in her silk skirts. My blood heats at the memory of her skin, her touch, her taste from so recently. It feels bizarre that so much has changed since I last saw her.
“We need a moment alone,” I murmur, turning her into the opposite stream, guests headed back towards the ballroom.
Temple of Cocidius: A Monster Girl Harem Adventure Serial Part 5 Page 8